[VIDEO] Egyptian Journalist & Blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy On Workers & Egypt's Revolution

This is an excellent talk on the role of workers in the ongoing Egyptian revolution and the state of the revolutionary struggle in Egypt today. Fascinating, inspiring - and sobering - stuff.

Egypt's Revolution Continues To Burn

Lots of people hoped that everything would return to normal after the dictator Mubarak abdicated. They hoped that once the face at the top was changed people would be happy. None wanted this more than the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), led by Mubarak's childhood friend Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi. At first they seemed to get their way. Tahrir Square, the beating heart of the revolution, was emptied and the revolutionaries went home. The military, while it used the language of the revolution and talked about its martyrs, tried activists in front of military tribunals, which handed out swift and harsh judgments. Strikes and protests were banned. Meanwhile, the cops who killed around 900 protestors during the revolution weren't prosecuted. Former regime figures weren't prosecuted for their crimes and theft. Others - "little Mubaraks" - were left in charge of public businesses, universities, hospitals, the government controlled unions.

But in a revolution the people rarely are happy to settle with cosmetic change. In the wake of Mubarak's fall, strike waves rolled across the country. After all, it had been a mass strike by millions that had forced the military's hand in turfing Mubarak. Now those workers had tasted their power, there was no putting it back in the bottle - even the military trials of strike leaders failed to quash the movement. This was combined with an mushrooming of independent unions, controlled by rank-and-file election and committed to bettering the conditions of the workers, rather than simply serving as a conduit to transmit the priorities and propaganda of the dictatorship. Many of those unions have now come together to form a union central representing everyone from tax collectors to hospital workers and bus drivers.

Sooner or later the movement was going to come up against the attempts by the military government to put a lid on any change. That time appears to be now. It seems clear that a new phase with a new decisive battle is taking shape in Egypt. Millions marched last Friday, demanding that the cops who killed protestors be put on trial - along with former regime figures. The demands include purging public life of officials from the former regime, whose loyalty is to the defeated dictatorship and whose interest is in rolling back the revolution. And from political demands, the revolution has now taken on social demands - demanding minimum and maximum wages to bring aid to the poor and close the massive gap between the richest and poorest. They want state industries that were sold at fire sale prices to Mubarak's cronies to be brought back under state control.

The immediate response of the government and the military leadership has been twofold. On the one hand, it was announced just prior to today's mass protests - including at Tahrir, which has been again been occupied by a permanent sit-in, like the early days of the revolution - that the deputy Prime Minster had resigned. He was a hated figure from the former regime and his departure is a clear victory. There were also several verdicts released which found former regime figures guilty. According to Al Jazeera:

Earlier on Tuesday, an Egyptian court sentenced Ahmed Nazif, Egypt's former prime minister, to a one-year suspended jail term.
Two other ministers from Hosni Mubarak's, the former president, cabinet were also sentenced to prison for fraud, judicial sources said.
Habib al-Adli, the former interior minister and one of the most reviled members of Mubarak's administration because of the brutality of his police force, was sentenced to five years and former finance minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali received ten years.
Al-Adli and Boutros-Ghali, who is being tried in absentia, have both been sentenced in other cases. This was the first time Nazif has received a court conviction.
The three were fined $15.6m and are to return the same amount to the state. Boutros-Ghali and Adli were fined another approximately $16.9m, sources told the AFP news agency.

But the military council, through its spokesman Mohsen El-Fangari also came on TV to deliver threats to the protestors in Tahrir, Suez and elsewhere. They were warned not to disrupt "public order." There is also a widespread belief that the military and the police have deliberately allowed criminal gangs to run rampant in Cairo as a way to make people long for the security of the dictatorship. In addition, there are shadowy forces - identically dressed men who show up at Tahrir with truckloads of rocks, attacks on Christian churches designed to foment inter-religious conflict - that are undoubtedly connected to the regime. The response, however, to El-Fangari was clear enough - tens of thousands of protestors took off their shoes and waved them in the air - a profound insult and demonstration of defiance in Arab culture that was a popular display whenever Mubarak spoke, prior to his resignation. And protestors intended, for the first time, to march past the Prime Minister's palace, something that never happened during Mubarak's final days.

As resentment and longing for change continues to burn throughout the Arab world, Egypt remains the key to everything. It is the most populous nation and a lynchpin, along with Israel, in America's Middle East policy. If the revolution can push forward in Egypt, deposing the corrupt and compliant military leadership - who own up to a third of the economy - they can help to bring about an historic transformation, the kind that happen once in a century.

Millions back on Egypt’s streets|16Jul11|Socialist Worker

Greek Austerity Vote Is Just The Beginning

There was a certain amount of hand-wringing by the business press and politicians internationally that the PASOK government of Greece might not be able to pass the second austerity package in a year. However, it seemed unlikely that more than a handful would revolt against the party when it came down to it. The party that once resisted the Greek military junta had already sold their souls to austerity and neo-liberalism some time ago. As it turned out, just one PASOK MP voted against his party and, in reward, was immediately expelled.

Government agreement to drive down living standards and sell the store for a pack of magic beans - and magic beans would be more effective at reviving the Greek economy than growth destroying austerity and privatizations - is barely the beginning. With around 80 percent of the Greek population opposed to the second austerity package and there having been a year of significant mobilizations, strikes, general strikes and riots, the working class is more radicalized and angry than ever. Indeed, as the votes took place inside the austere parliament, outside tens of thousands of people were battling with cops who attacked them indiscriminately. This is what it looks like to save Europe - tear gas, burning vehicles and hand-to-hand (or baton-to-stave) combat.

Greece is now divided into two clearly defined camps: the minority who favour and want to impose austerity - and who thus represent only the wealthiest Greeks, the banks, the international lending agencies, speculators, corporations, etc. And the people. It is the people vs the machine. The battle would be a quick and decisive one based upon democratic choice or sheer numbers, except that the Greek parliament is not in the service of democracy. And now that the facade of democracy has been lifted, the real source of legitimacy for the Greek state - and by extension the European Union - is made clear - it is armed bodies of men with their sticks and guns and tear gas and shields.

That lesson will not have been missed by the Greek people. The only thing in question is whether there is sufficient confidence and organization to move beyond the symbolic actions of 24 and 48-hour general strikes to action that is powerful enough to counter the threats of international capital and the ratings agencies. The rulers of Greece and Europe must be made afraid - afraid that if they try to impose austerity on Greeks their reward will be the same that Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia received: revolution. Things are moving fast in Greece and, in the coming days, the balance of forces in this battle will become clearer. An interview earlier this week with a Greek socialist gives a flavour of where the struggle may go.

Panos [Garganas] said, “There is now a movement in the unions to extend the strikes beyond Wednesday.
“The power workers are determined to continue until the government backs down. That message is spreading.
“Hellenic post bank workers, who face privatisation, are set to hold a general assembly on Thursday to prolong the strike, as do water workers in Salonica, Greece’s second city."

The irony is that PASOK has more power to negotiate terms than it seems to realize. The global banking sector is on the edge of their seats that a Greek default will lead to a "Lehman moment" - a knock-on effect that will tear through first the European banking system and then world credit markets like a tsunami. When push came to shove, neither the IMF nor the European Central Bank was likely to permit such a massive potential meltdown. Even the Greek Tories, New Democracy, seemed to realize this and have called for a re-negotiation of the terms of this tranche of aid. Why PASOK has completely rolled over and thus likely ensured their defeat for a generation, while creating a dangerous level of social conflict, is unclear. What is clear is that, to paraphrase Orwell, the future lies with the proles.

Greece passes key austerity plan - The Globe and Mail

NATO Has Already Lost In Libya

I'm certainly not one to believe that imperialist agendas, hideous in life, won't rise zombie-like from the grave. The present air war by NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is proof enough of that. The failure of NATO in Afghanistan, after ten years, to defeat the ragtag guerilla forces of the Taliban was surely more than enough proof that the cold war alliance was both American sock-puppet and a paper tiger. Heck, even the outgoing US Defence Secretary thinks so, saying that NATO has a "dim, if not dismal" future in his final policy speech.

And, yet, NATO managed to rouse its sickly self to attack Libya. First of all, if anyone has any illusions that NATO has any interest in Arab democracy, I would point to the fact that the west has supported every dictator in the region, no matter how brutal. They continue to support the Saudi monarchy that is so repressive it can't even bring itself to let women drive cars. The US gave Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak close to $3 billion every single year - not for economic aid or food or to help build schools - but directly to the security apparatus that beat and tortured any democratic movements that dared to show their face in public.

No, the only reason that NATO is in Libya is the attempt to get ahead of the wave of revolutions, the redirect and control them with an eye to turning to the advantage of the US and its allies. They saw the upheavals in unreliable allies like Libya and ostensible enemies like Syria as an opportunity to replace those regimes with ones that would be more pliant to western wishes and corporate control - as well as to opening space for Israel, widely despised as a colonial usurper, oppressor and racist state. Meantime, they have bent their efforts to sparing as much of the dictatorships that are America's consistent allies, like Bahrain and, up to the last minute, Yemen.

Libya's embattled uprising seemed a perfect opportunity, with memories of the demonization of Gaddafi still strong in the western mind from the 80s and early 90s. And the uprising's "official" organs very quickly came to be dominated by regime defectors who, only the day before, were happily repressing the Libya people as part of the Gaddafi regime. This domination was ensured with air support from the west and money from the Gulf dictatorships, including the enlightened despotism in Qatar.

And yet, this attempt to subvert the revolutions through military intervention is already a dismal failure. Even if, some months from now, Gaddafi is defeated and the Transitional National Council takes power with NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council's blessing, what movement in the middle east is going to want the kind of "help" that has been visited upon Libya. It will take years of rebuilding to repair the infrastructure destroyed by NATO bombs. And people will look to Tunisia and Egypt and see revolutions that proceeded without having to disintegrate into civil war. Even in Yemen, where Saleh has held on most tenaciously, the destruction and death has been at a much more modest level than in Libya.

The proof of this wariness is clear from Syria where the opposition movement has been clear that it has no interest in NATO "help" in overthrowing Assad. In fact, while Assad is no less entrenched than Gaddafi and civil society no less truncated by the dictatorship, the tenacity and bravery of the movement is clearly eroding the regime and its military apparatus bit by bit. And the movement isn't under the control of opportunist former regime figures but, rather, local coordinating committees that have real popular support and participation.

It's likely true, as commentators like Pepe Escobar have argued, that the Saudi regime is funnelling money to friendly Sunni groups in Syria to strengthen the hand of sectarian opposition to the Allawite (Shia) Assad's control of Syria. But this is not the driving nor dominant force in the Syrian movement that is marked by slogans calling for inter-faith, regional and ethnic solidarity.

The result is that NATO faces a lose-lose situation in Libya. The possibility of appearing as an attractive alternative for the restive populations of North Africa and the Middle East has been dissipated by the failure to win a clear and quick victory in Libya. NATO's political credibility has also been undermined by the murderous and repressive actions of Israel against the Palestinian Arab population over which it rules with carte blanche by the Americans. And, yet, if NATO pulls out of Libya it will face an even bigger defeat than the one ever looming in Afghanistan: Libya is closer to Italy than Toronto is to Buffalo, New York. If NATO can't win a war in its own backyard what good is it? This will be compounded if the Syrians overthrow their regime without "help" from NATO.

With the Egyptian revolt spreading to Greece and Spain, it's quite possible that the debacle in Libya will turn what western leaders thought was an opportunity into further crisis. And that is good news for the Arab people of the Middle East and the cause of democracy.

Defiant Gaddafi vows to defeat NATO - Africa - Al Jazeera English